~Don't talk about angels Or how I'll be saved I'm no coward But I'm not that brave Rags are blowing Rain's getting near I'm done with running And it's getting dark in here~ ~Sleep in peace old friend for me you'll never die~

There won't be any more memorials at Anfield now; the justice campaign is over and has ended with vindication. I personally wouldn't want to see Duckenfield hauled up in front of criminal courts, and I suspect many of the victims' families feel the same way. The key point is the victims have been vindicated, Liverpool fans can hold their heads up high, and when Man Utd and Chelsea fans call us murderers, we can point to the legal verdict that proves them wrong.

...and obviously, The Sun will never be popular in Liverpool ever again, but in an ideal world it wouldn't take a disaster like Hillsborough to make people realise what a dreadful publication that is! Now if only we could do the same for the Mail...

Elessar wrote:There won't be any more memorials at Anfield now; the justice campaign is over and has ended with vindication. I personally wouldn't want to see Duckenfield hauled up in front of criminal courts, and I suspect many of the victims' families feel the same way. The key point is the victims have been vindicated, Liverpool fans can hold their heads up high, and when Man Utd and Chelsea fans call us murderers, we can point to the legal verdict that proves them wrong.

...and obviously, The Sun will never be popular in Liverpool ever again, but in an ideal world it wouldn't take a disaster like Hillsborough to make people realise what a dreadful publication that is! Now if only we could do the same for the Mail...

There was some retired copper on Yorkshire TV yesterday peddling the drunk fans bollocks. He said he did not accept the unlawful killing verdict. Twat.

In the seventies and eighties, there was a lot that was wrong with football, and the way it was run, particularly from a crowd point of view.

At Heysel, SOME of the Juventus fans had flare guns, that they were firing at the Liverpool fans, fuck knows how they got THOSE in, but they did. I guess it was the norm then to expect that sort of thing. We can sit here all day and discuss the "chicken and the egg" syndrome, but at the end of the day, nearly forty Italian fans died in the ensuing rampages.

The fact is that (for some) football was seen as a good old excuse for an international punch up, and with Italian and English fans you had probably the worst two nations for historically exploiting that.

However you look at it though, you should never try to tie in that Hillsborough was some sort of Devine retribution for Heysel. The majority of the Italian fans at Heysel were there innocently to watch a game of football, as were those Liverpool fans at Hillsborough.

Also, I think you could argue that the most "criminal" things that happened at Hillsborough, were the events that happened in the aftermath, not those that happened during the actual tragedy. I don't think anyone intended one person to die, let alone 96 of them.

It wasn't just the way The Sun made out the fans were guilty of causing it, but the way their photographers rushed up to the crowd fences to take pictures of people being crushed to death, instead of actually helping anyone. That didn't go down very well at the time.

What is left of your dream?Just the words on your stone.A man who learnt how to teach,But forgot how to learn.

I'm not too sure I fully comprehend the verdict either. The verdict "unlawfully killed" seems to suggest to me that previously, someone must have thought that someone believed they might have been "lawfully killed". To me, an accident or bad decision (or in this case, series of them) sits between the two, and not categorically in one end or the other.

Many mistakes were made on the day, not least of which apparently, were the couple of thousand fans who turned up To a football game without tickets. So, although the Police made a terrible (no strike that, catastrophic) decision to open the gates and let them in, had they not been there, the Police would not have had any reason to let them in.

So, although you can't say that any of those without tickets became victims, unfortunately for them they all seemed to be innocent people who'd bought tickets and were meant to be there, as a "collective", then the Liverpool fans without tickets must have had some percentage of culpability, however small, into the reasons why the tragedy happened.

Yeah, a LOT of shitty things happened around football back then. Heysel, Hillsborough, Bradford. Glad we might have at least learnt something useful out of a lot tragedy.

What is left of your dream?Just the words on your stone.A man who learnt how to teach,But forgot how to learn.

Well, in Baker Street before a Liverpool vs Chelsea FA Cup Final, I was surrounded by a group of around 20 Chelsea fans who pointed at me and shouted "murderer". I'm not sure what they were referring to, because I'm pretty sure Heysel was a year before I was born.

It's an unfortunate fact of human nature, that some people will look for ANYTHING to be devisive, and separate elements of society. Race, religion, and if they're strapped for anything else, what football team you support.

What is left of your dream?Just the words on your stone.A man who learnt how to teach,But forgot how to learn.

Yeah. Man Utd fans have historically been the worst offenders of the Hillsborough songs, but they are Liverpool's main rivals and although I personally have never heard them at Anfield, I'm sure Liverpool fans have sung plenty of horrible Munich songs, so while the whole thing is horrible, I put it down to being the worst aspect of a bitter rivalry.

Chelsea fans have no excuse though, and they seem to do it far more nowadays than Man Utd fans. I remember them singing 'murderers' during a minute silence for Hillsborough victims when they were playing Tottenham.

I think it's an unfortunate side effect of their rapid success and gain in the wrong sort of fans. It's a shame for their genuine fans to see their club turn into this.

Elessar wrote:Yeah. Man Utd fans have historically been the worst offenders of the Hillsborough songs, but they are Liverpool's main rivals and although I personally have never heard them at Anfield, I'm sure Liverpool fans have sung plenty of horrible Munich songs, so while the whole thing is horrible, I put it down to being the worst aspect of a bitter rivalry.

Chelsea fans have no excuse though, and they seem to do it far more nowadays than Man Utd fans. I remember them singing 'murderers' during a minute silence for Hillsborough victims when they were playing Tottenham.

I think it's an unfortunate side effect of their rapid success and gain in the wrong sort of fans. It's a shame for their genuine fans to see their club turn into this.

Indeed. I remember back in 2005 when Hull had been promoted back to the Championship. We played QPR and a few Hull "fans" thought it would be funny to chant offensive stuff about 7/7. To the club's credit, they closed down the section from where the singing had come which was directly adjacent to the away fans.

We now have a group of fans opposed to everything the owners do. Whilst the owners have fucked up somewhat over the name change and getting rid of concession passes because some fans are using them illegally, I cannot support a group whose chairman once posted on Twitter about the owner, "fuck off back to Egypt, you Muslim *unt"

I am reading Phil Scraton,'s book Hillsborough The Truth. Very harrowing stuff.

As an experienced emergency nurse, I know that in the event of a disaster or multiple casualties, every hospital has a major incident plan which is implemented once the hospital have been informed of what has happened. That means they start getting in extra staff very, very quickly to deal with the influx of patients. No notification was given to the Northern General in Sheffield. Which means all of a sudden, dozens of seriously injured people turned up and there was only the normal number of staff on duty.